Redlands Bowl Summer Music Festival Opens with Young Artists Concert, June 25

The Redlands Bowl Summer Music Festival begins June 25 with a concert featuring the winners of the 51st Annual Young Artists Auditions. Six brilliant young musicians will step onto the stage under the stars for the first event of the 2002 season.

"The quality of the performers gets better and better every year," exclaimed contest chair Marilyn Showler about the talented young people, ranging in age from 14 to mid-twenties, who auditioned for the privilege to list this concert on their resumés.

"This concert is very important for these young people," Showler said, "because it opens many doors for them. It's also important to secure the future of the Bowl with outstanding performers for our audiences to enjoy."

Fourteen-year-old Sean Lee of Fullerton, a winner in the junior division, will play the violin. Lee has already had notable performance experience. One of 82 instrumentalists selected out of 600 applicants, Lee performed at nine years old with the Disney Young Musician's Symphony Orchestra on no less a stage than the Hollywood Bowl. He has been training on the violin since he was four years old.

Angel Joy Blue of Apple Valley, another junior division winner, will sing a varied selection of vocal works. While a student at the prestigious Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, Blue performed as a featured soloist in the opera productions and in the Gospel Choir. In 2001, Blue was privileged to sing at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Currently she is a student at California Baptist University. Riverside resident Susan Olsen, who performed Jacques Ibert's "Concertino da Camera" for saxophone with the Redlands Symphony Orchestra this spring, won in the senior division. A recent Master's Degree recipient from the University of Redlands, Olsen has extensive performance credits and multiple awards since 1997. As a new recording artist, she performed "Suite for Alto Saxophone and Piano" by U of R Professor Alexandra Pierce.

Another senior winner, Fang Fang Xu of Alhambra will perform on the cello. From 1995 through 1999, Xu performed as assistant principal cellist with the renowned American Youth Symphony conducted by Mehli Mehta and Alexander Treger. Xu has performed with no less than nine orchestras including the University of Southern California Thornton Symphony where she served as principal cellist.

Helen Chang of Loma Linda, also a senior division winner, will perform on the piano. Having already performed as soloist with the Santa Rosa Community Orchestra and Pacific Union College Orchestra, Chang's impressive concerto repertoire includes a Mozart piano concerto, three Beethoven piano concertos, and Tchaikowsky's Piano Concerto No. 1. Soprano Rebecca Tomlinson of Pacific Palisades already has professional opera credits, most recently as the handmaiden in the current Los Angeles Opera production of Puccini's "Turandot". She also has sung with the Redlands Symphony Orchestra and the UCLA Orchestra.

The concert will be preceded with a special guest performance by the Youth Ensemble of Strings from the Community School of Music and the Arts, which is affiliated with the University of Redlands. This ensemble, founded in 1990 by the Cultural Arts Commission of the City of Redlands and currently directed by Karen Thurman-Palmer, performs regularly in the community throughout the year.

The concert, sponsored by the Associates of the Redlands Bowl, Inc., begins at 8:15 p.m. with the pre-concert starting at approximately 7:30. The intermission speakers will be Marilyn Showler and Janell VanUffelen, and the ushers will be representatives from the Associates of the Redlands Bowl and from The Spinet.

Continuing the tradition begun in 1924, this and all performances are presented at no charge. A free-will offering is taken at intermission. The Redlands Bowl is located between Eureka and Grant Streets, off Brookside Avenue, in Redlands. For more information, call the Redlands Bowl Office at 909/793-7316 or visit the website at www.redlandsbowl.org.